


Balance is triumph

by tucuxi



Series: Hawaii Five-O Steph Series [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Families of Choice, Gender Roles, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderswap, Internalized Misogyny, cis-swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 09:05:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15554316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucuxi/pseuds/tucuxi
Summary: Daniel Williams hates Hawaii from the moment he walks out of the airport, carry-on bag in hand and all his remaining post-divorce possessions stuck somewhere between airports, or maybe in whatever extra-dimensional hell checked baggage ends up in when it's lost in transit.





	Balance is triumph

Daniel Williams hates Hawaii from the moment he walks out of the airport, carry-on bag in hand and all his remaining post-divorce possessions stuck somewhere between airports, or maybe in whatever extra-dimensional hell checked baggage ends up in when it's lost in transit. He didn't bring much: it was too expensive to ship things anyway, so he just checked extra suitcases, and then the airline lost them. 

Hawaii is too bright. It's too hot, it's too humid, it's too casual, and it's too expensive. And there's sand fucking everywhere.  Danny's job is shitty, his co-workers don't speak comprehensible English half the time, and he's sure they're talking about him. Oh, and his ex-wife won't speak to him except through an asshole of a lawyer who is a real piece of work. Danny sets the two of them custom ring tones in a fit of pique his first week in Hawaii and leaves them, even when it's a little embarrassing when he has to fish out his phone at work. 

Danny's new partner, Meka, isn't half bad, but Meka's just one guy, and he has a wife and kid of his own, and a lot on his plate that isn't Danny's bullshit problems. They get a beer once in a while, and Meka makes an effort to get him in with some of the guys in the department, but it really doesn't work: something about Danny wearing ties, and the word  _ haole _ a few too many times, and Danny's out of there. He's a damn good cop, a damn good detective, and it's not his fault he got uprooted out of the only place he ever wanted to be into this damn tropical hellhole. So maybe he shouldn't have said all of that out loud: maybe he's lucky Meka's an understanding guy who chalks a lot of it up to Danny being pissed off about the divorce and how little time he gets with Grace. It doesn't make Danny any friends in the HPD, that's all. 

The only unreservedly good thing about Hawaii is that Grace likes it here. It might be hard not to like it, since she's in a huge fancy house with a maid and more money than Danny's entire extended family would have known what to do with growing up, okay, so maybe he has a complex about that. So what. But Grace likes going to the beach; she likes shave ice and pineapple and sand and sunshine and dolphins. And she likes Dolphin Trainer Barbie more than any of the fancy American Girl dolls Step-Stan keeps getting for her. 

"They're boring," Grace says, when Danny asks. "They all have books, but they do things like go shopping and talk about math, or cook together and learn about being friends. I know how to have friends. I want to read about working with dolphins and being a scuba rescue diver." 

And okay, so Danny might have issues, what with how much that makes him puff up with pride, that Grace will take Danny's gift of a Hawaii-themed Barbie over Stan's hundred-dollar-plus custom-outfit dolls, but he'll take it if it means he's going to have his little girl's attention just a little bit longer. 

So Danny tries – he honestly tries – to put his head down and his nose to the grindstone, and to just do the job. He's got a mouth on him, everyone knows that within a minute of meeting him. It's how the Williams family has always been, short and smart-mouthed and stubborn as fuck, and Danny doesn't know how to be any other way. After a few weeks in Hawaii, he honestly doesn't see that he wants to be any other way. The mere concept of things happening on island time drives him nuts, and as much as he sometimes thinks about ditching the ties and wearing something that won't roast him alive, well, it's become a thing. And the thing is, Daniel Williams doesn't back down, not even when it's something as stupid as wearing ugly-ass ties. They're horrible ties, he knows that. They're ugly as sin, and he only keeps them because his daughter picked them out, even if he's basically 100% sure she did it with his ex-wife's help when Rachel was particularly angry with him and exercising truly epic amounts of passive-aggression. 

So to say that, you know, Danny's not happy in Hawaii? That's an understatement. He's pissed off at the entire state, is more like it, and has brief stretches of happiness when he gets to pick Grace up from school and hear about her day, or when she calls him unexpectedly and his whole heart lifts in his chest. The rest of the time he's just marking time, doing his job well to spite the assholes who think he's going to give up, and waiting for the next time he gets to see his little girl. 

The McGarrett case being given to Danny is a huge fuck you. It's a cop-killer case and back in Jersey there'd be a whole unit on this kind of thing, because if you let the Mob think they can start killing cops, you're back to Al Capone and machine guns in the streets, and Jersey remembers that shit. Here in Hawaii, it's apparently a mystery, a completion-rate-sinker, and McGarrett's retired, so it's shoved off on the new guy, the one whose partner is off sick this week, who has to work the whole thing solo. It's just another thing to hate about Hawaii. 

And then Danny goes to the house, and runs into John McGarrett's scary-ass SEAL offspring. 

Stephanie Joan McGarrett is taller than Danny: easily over six foot, plus combat boots. She looks like she could eat him for lunch without bothering to chew. And she's not only trespassing, she's trying to take evidence from an active crime scene. Danny stamps down all his initial inappropriate thoughts, because hello, she's ripped, she could tear him to shreds without even trying, and does his damn job. 

Okay, so he pulls a gun on her, and she pulls a gun on him, and he gets press-ganged into being part of some kind of vendetta mission, but whatever. At least he doesn't say the first thing that comes into his head when he meets her. He's pretty sure she'd have decked him for asking if all SEALs come standard with arms like hers. 

They form Five-O. They do their crazy, hair-raising thing, and Danny spends a lot of time running his mouth, okay, but he does know how not to say the really unforgivably stupid things. He learned that from Rachel. He learned it too late, past the point where it would have made a difference, but Danny knows how not to get fired for blatant workplace sexual harassment, okay. He knows how to stop and work around something. At least he knows it when he's not so mad that his first instinct is to go for the jugular. He knows how to pick his battles when it's not with Rachel, and that's turning out to be a good thing. 

Because the thing is, the thing Danny picks up on real fast, because he might wear ties, he might have shitty taste in ex-wives, and he might not be great at living in Hawaii, much less liking Hawaii, but he's a damn good detective, the thing is, Steph is real broken, real delicate, in a lot of very hidden ways. 

Oh, she's a badass. She's a SEAL who was top of her class, top of her unit, chased Hesse and his brother around the world and caught both of them, put bullets in them both and then caught Hesse when he came back from the dead. She's a stone-cold fox who will dress to impress and use her undercover interrogation skills ruthlessly to get information out of a kingpin drug dealer and then pull a holstered gun from god knows where and save Chin's life without hardly looking. 

And if you so much as breathe near the topic of what people think girls are supposed to do, it's not Steph there anymore. It's some kind of broken, scared kid who thinks she's done something wrong. So the more Danny learns, the more he puts together about Steph's childhood, the more he wishes he had a time machine so he could go back in time and just plain strangle John McGarrett. 

How someone as smart as Steph could think she's not enough, well, Danny doesn't get it, but he'll be damned if he won't figure it out. He's got his own little girl to think of, and he refuses to let her grow up in a world where her only options are being pretty like Rachel, all steel fist and velvet glove and so few defenses in the end when things went south, or being strong on the outside and made of broken glass on the inside like Steph. There's got to be something else, and Danny's going to find it if it kills him. And that means understanding Steph, which, well, crazy hijinks and attempts on his life aside, spending time with her isn't exactly a hardship. 

And maybe it's stupid of Danny to move into her house when his apartment situation goes south, because Steph is basically his Hawaiian kryptonite, okay, he can figure that out. But his apartment is a shithole, and it's a dangerous shithole now too, and he can't keep bringing Grace there. And being in Steph's spare room while he was on medical leave, well, he still hates the beach, but the sound of the ocean so close by was nice, that's all he's saying. If he got kind of used to seeing Steph in the morning, to drinking coffee while she did her crazy SEAL-prep swimming and workouts, well, you can't blame him. It's good coffee. That's his story, and he's sticking to it. 

And Grace takes to Steph like Danny hadn't ever hoped she would, so fast it makes his head spin. Steph moves above Kono in Grace's affections for good when she agrees that Grace can have a green bedroom, and lets Grace pick out glow-in-the-dark stars for the ceiling and then lets Grace sit on her shoulders so she can put them where she wants all by herself, instead of having someone else do it for her. 

* * *

The first time he and Steph have sex, Danny honestly isn't sure what to expect. His sex life since the divorce has pretty much consisted of his own right hand and maybe a bit more resentment than is strictly considered healthy. And before that, well, Rachel wasn't ever really forthcoming about what she wanted, especially once they were out of the heat of the moment. Even then she was usually hesitant about oral sex, willing but not enthusiastic, and not willing to ask for it basically ever. 

To say he's blown away by Steph, well. It would be an understatement. Danny dated Catholic girls in high school, the willing ones and the shy ones, and they didn't always look the part you'd expect. He dated a slutty cheerleader in college, and a pretty geeky girl in his mandatory chemistry lab who saved his grade, and a musician who blew him away by demonstrating circular breathing. And then Rachel.

And now there's Steph. And, so, okay, Danny has a thing for strong women. He's known this for a while.  But in his experience, most tall women don't want to date a loudmouth guy who's pretty much barely 5'5" in his shoes and can't get out of the library because he's studying up for the police academy. He put that aside, and then Rachel rear-ended his car, and he wound up in Hawaii. 

That's all a long, roundabout way of saying that sex with Steph, well, it just blows his mind. She sucks cock like she enjoys it, not like it's an obligation, and she tells him what she wants. It's pretty much all nonverbal on her part, sure, so maybe she's not so great with words all the damn time, but Danny can read her pretty well by now. After so long getting shot at together he'd better know what her faces mean. Danny gets her off twice, delighted and turned on by how responsive she is, how shamelessly loud, and they fuck, and they cuddle. 

Danny gets her coffee in the morning, and it's all delightfully un-weird, except for how Steph doesn't go for it again that night when they get back to the house after Kono takes her out for lunch and Chin gives him a quiet shovel talk in place of Steph's dad that is, frankly, completely fucking terrifying. If Danny wasn't worried about fucking this up before, well, he's damn sure Chin could find a dozen ways to hide his body without even calling in a favor from his extended family, even if they are on better terms these days. If Chin did call in a favor, well, Danny's pretty sure even Stan's connections couldn't find out what had happened to Danny. Maybe not even Steph.

So that night, when Steph doesn't go for it a second time, well, Danny's not sure it's going to happen, this thing between them. 

But Danny's stupid, and Danny's reckless, and Danny's never known when to call it quits. And he likes Steph more than he's liked anyone in a long time. 

"So," Danny says, taking a pull of his beer and looking out at the water. 

Steph will probably take this better if he's not looking at her while he asks, and she's not a perp, she's not in an interrogation room. This isn't some kind of investigation. He can keep her in his peripheral vision, that should be enough. 

"Are we going to talk about it, babe?" He asks. "Or is this going to be some kind of pretend it never happened and hope Kono shuts up sometime soon thing? Because, Steph, I hate to break it to you but even I can tell you that's never going to happen. Kono looked at you like Christmas came early, you know that? Fuck, she looked happier than she did about Christmas, and I don't think that's just because Hawaiian Christmas is freaking weird."

Steph pauses, bottle of beer halfway to her lips, and then she very consciously unpauses, takes a sip. 

"Also," Danny adds. "Chin gave me the scariest shovel talk I think I've ever even heard of, and I grew up Catholic in Jersey, I have heard some shovel talks in my time, let me tell you. I really don't want him to kill me and have to hide the body. Besides," he adds with a grin. "That would probably make your life difficult too, you know, I'm pretty sure it might get in the way of things going smoothly." 

Steph lets out a breath she was ever-so-slightly holding. 

"So. What is this," she asks. "Is it just something easy?" 

She makes some kind of gesture that might indicate the house, or Hawaii, or just something about their general life. Danny actually laughs. 

"Easy?" He demands. "Since when are you ever – you don't make my life easy, babe, you're a walking traffic hazard and I don't think you've so much as been in the same room as police procedural manual in your life, even the ones I put in your desk, I think you set them on fire when I'm not looking. You drive cars into gunfire when I'm in the passenger seat. If I wanted easy, I'd be looking somewhere way far away. Jersey would be easy," he says, warming to the topic. "Jersey would be less sand, and less heat, and no one giving me shit for my ties – and you always give me shit for my ties, don't even try to deny it, you know you do."

And then Danny stops, because this isn't working. Steph is getting tenser and tenser in his peripheral vision.

"No," he says, after a pause, because he needs to find the right words, rather than the easy ones. "No, babe, it's not easy. Most good things aren't easy, you know?"

Steph visibly relaxes, and Danny figures it's his turn. 

"What about you?" He asks. "I mean, you and Cath – wasn't that a thing?" 

Steph turns on him in exasperation. 

"Cath and I are friends," she bites out. " _ Just _ friends. There's no kinky lesbian Navy sex going on, and I'm not the butch to her femme, or whatever bullshit you've got cooked up in your brain." 

"Okay, babe, got it," Danny says, holding his hands up. "Got it, that's a sore point, not going in there without a flak jacket. Message received." 

Because Danny knows himself, he'll be going back in there at some point, poking around to find out what makes that particular fuse go off. Rachel always told him he couldn't leave well enough alone. What makes him a good detective sometimes makes him a shitty partner. 

"So, no," Steph says, when Danny just looks at her, as if she realizes she hasn't answered his question. "Dating my partner, a guy who's also my direct subordinate at the office? Not exactly what I'd call easy."

"Okay," Danny says. "Dating, that sounds good. Not too much all at once, not a one-off. So we're on the same page, then. This is a potentially really bad idea, definitely not easy. So, we're all in?" 

Steph laughs, and drains her beer. 

"Sure," she says. "When you put it like that, why the hell not." 

Danny stands up and moves over to her side. 

"Lots of reasons why not," he says, and he can tell from the way she freezes that she's picked up on how serious he is from his tone of voice. "But I still want to try."

Steph all but lunges for him, kisses him fiercely, and Danny has to pull back just long enough to suggest the bedroom, because he believes her, he does, and sand and sex really don't seem like they'd mix. 

Steph proves she's a genius yet again, not that Danny would ever tell her that to her face, her head is puffed up enough as it is. But regardless of whether he'll ever tell her, it's impressive, the way she gets them indoors, upstairs, and undressed before Danny's really sure what's hit him. Steph is lying back, pulling Danny down over her, and he's gotten hard so fast he's practically dizzy from the blood loss. 

"You should fuck my face," Steph says, like that's a perfectly normal thing to say to someone, like that's something you do on what is, effectively, their second date. Danny blinks at her, out of words, frozen in place.

"Or not," she says. "You don't want to?" 

"Fuck, yes," Danny manages. "I just – that's a lot, you know? I mean, not that I'm saying –" he gestures at himself, because he's not ashamed, there's really nothing to be ashamed of, but he's not trying to imply anything about being hung like a porn star, but. "I just – you sure?" 

Steph gives him her best About-To-Jump grin. Danny's seen that look before she's done the dumbest fucking things, and he thinks he's probably going to have some kind of really inappropriate workplace reaction the next time she makes that particular face on the job if she keeps making it in bed like this.

"Danny," she says. "Have you met me?" 

And, okay, sure, since when does Steph do anything she doesn't want to do, at least when it's not for the job. If it's not related to Hesse or girl things, and, well, okay, fine, this isn't a danger zone as far as Danny can tell. With that look, Danny shouldn't have asked. She settles her head against a pillow and urges him to knee-walk up the bed, brace his hands on the fancy and surprisingly sturdy headboard. Steph opens her mouth and just sort of waits, and it takes her quirking an eyebrow to get him to move. 

Steph's mouth is shockingly hot around his cock, and Danny has to resist the urge to just go for it, to fuck her face the way she said. He moves slow and steady, then pulls back out. 

"You'll tell me if you want me to stop," he asks. Steph gives him her best unimpressed look. "I mean, shove me or something," he says, because, duh, no talking, mouth full, way to be smart, Williams. "Not too hard, though, I don't want bruises, okay, that's not my thing."

"I think I'll manage," she says. "But I'm not going to want you to stop." 

She pulls at him again, and Danny lets her maneuver him into position. She glares at him when he moves too slowly, slaps his ass and honestly doesn't seem to need to breathe. She swallows around his dick from time to time and it's all over far too quickly.

"Holy shit," he gasps, after he comes, after Steph has pushed him away and stretched her neck a little bit. She makes a contented face when her neck cracks, and Danny is too out of it to wince at the sound the way he usually would. "How did you –" 

"BUD/S," she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Once you can hold your breath for a couple of minutes underwater, blow jobs get way easier." 

"Holy mother of god," Danny says, because he'd honestly never thought of that application of SEAL training, and now he's never going to be able to stop thinking about it. He's pretty sure most of the dudes don't use the training this way, but, you know, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is gone, who knows, maybe Danny's full of useless stereotypes. 

"Not god," Steph smirks. "Just me. Now it's your turn. Or my turn, whichever." 

She stretches, and Danny just admires the long lines of her, the tattoos highlighting her biceps and ribs, the six-pack he's never seen on a woman in real life before. 

"What do you want?" Danny asks. He's kind of dying to eat her out and it must be obvious on his face, because Steph grins at him and spreads her legs.  "Can I–"

"Seriously, when am I going to say no?" Steph asks. "Who says no to a guy who actively wants to eat her out?" 

Danny's expression must change, because Steph nods, like he's explained the whole thing. 

"Ah," she says. 

Rachel's name hangs heavy in the air between them for a moment, and Danny has time to wonder if he's made it weird, bringing up his ex-wife like that, even if he bit back the complaints, the explanations, even her name. He has reason to believe most women don't like shit like that, don't like baggage like Danny's got in spades. 

"Well," Steph says, easy as anything, as if she can tell he's having second thoughts. "I sure as hell like it, so get going." 

And she actually shoves him down the bed. At some point, Danny thinks, they're really going to have to talk about this manhandling thing she's got going on, but maybe not just yet, because he thinks he might be kind of into it. He's not sure yet, so they might have to keep trying. You know, for science, or whatever. 

Steph's thighs are sticky, and Danny can't resist dipping his fingers right into her almost immediately, avoiding her clit for now, because she didn't want that just off the bat last time. Danny might not be the best lay in the world, he's been told that he's got room to move before, and by people who weren't his ex-wife, even, but he keeps track, and he learns fast. 

And he must be doing something right, because Steph is gasping and writhing in no time, and Danny hasn't gotten hard again this fast since he was a teenager, he doesn't think. He looks up the length of her body and bites her hip lightly. 

"God," Steph gasps. "Do that again." 

Danny obliges, biting into the arch of her pelvis, and she arches with a little wriggle and a whimper. And Danny knows it's her turn, okay, he knows, but he can't help the way his hips twitch against the bed a little bit chasing friction. He gasps. 

Steph, because she's Steph, because she's some kind of freakish super-SEAL Naval Intelligence genius extraordinaire, notices right away.  

"What," she says, quirking an eyebrow. "Already?" 

Danny bends down to bury his face in her cunt again, and she wraps her fingers in his hair to hold him away. 

"You want to fuck me?" Steph asks, and Danny stares. 

"But you haven't --" he says. He must look really confused. 

"Oh my god," Steph says. "Tell me you're not one of those one-for-one guys who keeps strict count." 

"I–" Danny says, at a loss for words because he'd always figured that was better than being a selfish jerk about it. 

"Okay, new rule," Steph says, and drags him up to kiss her with what seems like no effort at all. "No counting. Just orgasms all around. If we're having fun, who cares? Keeping track's a great way to end up with a shit ton of resentment and arguments about who's doing more work and who owes whom what. It's bullshit." 

Danny must look really baffled, because Steph smacks him on the side of the head. He makes a face, because that really wasn't a light tap.  

"Communication, Danny," she says. "It's this thing where if I'm not having fun, I'll goddamn well tell you, and vice versa. God, she fucked you over but good, didn't she?" 

Danny can't really deny that, but this isn't exactly a topic he wants to cover now. 

"Okay," he says, instead of letting her keep talking. "So can we go back to the orgasms and stop talking about my ex now?" 

Steph outright laughs, and that's something Danny hasn't heard in a long time, laughter during sex. He shoves thoughts of Rachel aside and kisses Steph again. 

"Yeah, Danny," she says when they finally come up for air. "Let's go." 

If Danny does keep count somewhere in the back of his mind, well, he figures it's a habit he'll have to break himself of slowly. And, anyway, Steph doesn't seem to mind being ahead, that he can tell. 

Afterwards they curl up together in her enormous bed, and Danny toys idly with her nipple, running a fingernail around the areola and watching as it puckers up. Steph is tan everywhere else, but here she's quite pale, her nipples almost shockingly dark against a patch of skin that hardly ever sees sun. 

Steph stirs again after a while, and presses a kiss to the top of Danny's head. She's so long and lean, whipcord fit, and Danny kind of wants to wrap himself up in her forever, never let her go. It's almost frightening how much he wants. He'd tell himself it was too fast, but he's been moving this direction for months now, maybe since Steph strong-armed him into joining her team in the first place. 

* * *

Things seem to settle into a kind of holding pattern, but Danny, well, Danny borrows trouble like it's going out of style, so when Danny runs into Rachel sipping wine with Steph and talking quietly while Grace draws, well. He's glad he already put away the groceries, because cleaning up spilled milk and eggs while Rachel yells at him, he's been there, he's done that, he knows how much his knee hates that kind of messy scrubbing-up from far-too-personal experience. 

But it's fine, is the amazing thing. Rachel doesn't yell at him for inviting someone else into Grace's life, doesn't force him to bring out the big guns about Step-Stan and hypocrisy, and Steph and Grace tag-team him into agreeing to surfing lessons before he knows what's hit him. 

The crazy thing is, he doesn't even mind. They curl up on the hammock after a dinner that is actually almost civil, which Danny didn't think would ever happen, and Danny wonders how much of her international diplomacy training Steph had to pull out to get him and Rachel to behave, and drops the thought for later in favor of pulling Steph indoors so he can get her into bed. The sunset will wait until tomorrow. 

The thing is, for all that Danny has made fun of Steph for being terrible with kids when she's in SEAL mode, she's great with Grace. She can tell when Grace wants something before Danny can, and he has no idea how she pulls that off, but it's a blessing. She also doesn't balk at explaining things that make Danny freeze, because how does his little girl know what alcohol smells like on an adult, things that make Danny white out with fear or rage. Those things, Steph just takes in stride. 

So it surprises Danny when Steph is sitting at the kitchen table the next morning on her computer, looking frazzled and under-exercised and like she's completely freaking out. 

"Hey, babe," Danny says. "Why haven't you swum yet?" 

Steph looks up, and Danny bites back a groan. 

"Oh god," he says, because his mouth goes off without a thought, and Steph looks off, but not homicidal. "That's the research face, how long have you been up and at this. What can possibly be so important, we don't have a case, you'd have woken me and dragged me to HQ if we had a case." 

Steph sighs, and scrubs a hand across her close-cropped hair.

"Lessons for Grace," she says. "You've got an email, but I know you hate email, so I got on it when I woke up." 

"And you haven't been swimming?" Danny said. "Steph, nothing's on fire. She'll get etiquette lessons. Hell," he says. "You could give her lessons, screw paying someone else. Saves you the research, and you know you were going to hack their records to be sure you could trust them in the house, don't even try to deny it." 

Steph doesn't look happy about it, exactly, but Danny figures it's because she didn't come up with the idea: she's all about efficiency, after all. Steph goes swimming, and starts up lessons with Grace, and Danny walks into the house every once in a while in the next couple of weeks to see Steph laying out silverware, or teaching Grace how to drop a curtsey, and goes off to leave them to it.

In retrospect, Danny figures, that was pretty damn  stupid. It takes his daughter to bring him up to speed, which was just plain embarrassing.

"So," Danny says, and he knows he probably shouldn't ambush Steph while they're stuck in traffic, but Steph is driving, and this is pretty much the only time Danny can be sure she won't just leave the room to get away from the conversation. There was a time Danny might not have put a crash out of the question, but he knows Steph's more careful now that he and Grace are in the picture, whether she'd admit it or not. 

Steph looks over at him when Danny doesn't continue right away, doesn't launch into a familiar litany of complaints about traffic, and that's a Aneurysm Face right there, she's picked up on the tone of voice, good. 

"Were you ever going to tell me how much you hate doing etiquette lessons, babe?" Danny asks. "'Cause Gracie had to fill me in, and let me tell you, having your nine-year-old daughter know more about your girlfriend's mental state than you do, it's not exactly what I'd call a pick-me-up, you know?" 

Steph frowns. 

"It's fine," she says. "They're going fine." 

"Okay," Danny says. "So we have to work on your vocabulary. Being stuck in traffic? Probably fine. Not getting shot at? Definitely fine. School being canceled, also fine, if you can work out a babysitter. And, you know, Kono walking out of the water and punching a guy in the face for crashing her wave? That's fine. Chin hacking someone's records? That's fine, if the governor has our back.  You being actively miserable because I've asked you to do something you hate?" Danny takes a breath, counts to ten. "That's not fine, Steph."

Her shoulders are tense, and Danny doesn't like that at all, nor the way her hands are gripping his car's steering wheel like it's some kind of shield. 

"Steph," Danny says. "I don't care about the lessons. I don't care if a literal monkey gives her lessons, or if it's some scary old lady in scratchy lace who was born in, who knows, nineteen-hundred." He takes a deep breath. "I care that you didn't tell me," he says. It comes out a little plaintive. 

Danny might have issues - hell, he knows he has issues. One of his friends' wives, a librarian back in Jersey, told him after the divorce that he and Rachel didn't just have issues, even, no, they had subscriptions. So Danny has issues. And one of those issues is having information withheld from him, especially by a partner. 

Steph is maybe a little less tense now, or maybe Danny is imagining things. He keeps talking. 

"So," Danny says. "I don't give a shit if you give Grace lessons. I don't actually give a shit about the lessons at all, really, except that they make Rachel happy, and when she's happy, she's less likely to email me and change our plans at the last minute or yell my head off if work goes haywire and we need her to pick up Grace, you know?" Danny takes a breath. "Steph, babe, I care about  _ you _ . If you don't want to do them, don't do them. It's that easy."

Steph pulls some kind of ridiculous driving maneuver and before Danny can grab the fuck-my-life-handle, they're pulled over in the shoulder and she's just staring at him. 

"That easy?" She demands. 

Danny has time to think, oh shit, because that's the broken-glass voice, the you-just-stepped-in-it voice, the things-are-broken voice. He's only heard the edges of it before, and he knows he's really fucked up now. 

"It's that easy?" Steph demands, and she sounds blindsided and angry at the same damn time. "Danno, have you met me? Since when is anything easy?" 

Danny blinks, because that's not where he expected this to go. 

"I–" he starts, and Steph cuts him off. 

"It's not that easy," she says. "And it's never been that easy. So I don't much like teaching etiquette, big deal. It helps Grace." 

It doesn't help Grace, is the thing. Danny's pretty sure Steph thinks Grace needs protecting, needs to be eased into the horror of the big bad world, like she didn't spend ages five to seven watching her parents' marriage devolve into passive aggression and shouting matches and tears behind locked doors and Danny drinking himself stupid after she was supposedly asleep. His little girl has more backbone than Danny knows what to do with, stubborn grit from the Williams side and enough class to hide her teeth, thanks to the Edwards side, and Danny loves her so much it hurts sometimes. And sure, he's overprotective, he wants Grace to be safe, he wants her to be happy, but he also knows the world's a scary damn place, okay, he's a cop. 

"It scares the fuck out of Grace," Danny says, blunt, because Steph's already walking on knives here, him beating around the bush isn't going to help things, not really. She's a direct person, is Steph, even when the fastest way through involves hanging a guy off a building or jumping into mid-air to grab a chain with a machine gun in one hand, things that would give a sane person pause. 

Steph has looked better, Danny thinks, after literally being shot.

"She thinks you're going to hate her for doing the damn lessons," Danny says. "Rachel and I fucked up enough, okay, we don't need anyone else giving Grace issues. She thinks you're miserable because you fucking well are, and because she's a perceptive kid, my daughter, and she's pretty sure you're going to hate her for it. So –" he waves his hands. "Just stop!"

Steph stares at him. Then, to Danny's horror, she starts laughing. It's not a good laugh, not the small chuckle Danny can sometimes coax out, or the whole-hearted belly laugh he's heard from Steph when Grace does something great, or the wry half-laugh Kono gets from time to time. This is jagged and bitter and awful, and Danny would do just about anything to get it to stop. 

Steph is still holding onto the steering wheel, and Danny reaches over and grabs her hand, pulls it away so he can lace his fingers with hers. He realizes a moment later that this was possibly a really stupid thing to do: Steph has an iron grip at the best of times, and she grabs onto him like she's drowning. As if Steph could drown, Danny thinks, as if anything the world could throw at her could keep her down in the water. But somehow, just by asking Steph to stop setting the table and find someone else to take over teaching Grace how to shake hands like a lady, Danny has hit a fracture point. 

Steph buries her head in her free hand, and gulps for air, and Danny doesn't care that there's a damn inconvenient console thing between the seats, he's up on his knees and grabbing for her before he can register that this is really going to kill his knee. 

Steph lets him pull her into his arms and hold her tight. She buries her face in his neck and the wracking laughter turns into sobs, and Danny's heart breaks all over again, because Steph cries the way Grace used to during the divorce, quiet and small so no one can hear her. It's not the way you cry if you expect anyone to care, Danny thinks, and he owes Grace so many apologies when she's old enough to hear them. But right now, Danny has his arms full of Navy SEAL mid-breakdown, and he just cups the back of her head in his free hand, runs his fingers through the buzzed hair at the back of her neck, and holds on for dear life. 

It feels like forever before Steph calms down. Danny doesn't let her go when she pulls, because he's worried she'll pull away forever, get out of the car and walk into traffic, he has no idea. 

"Shh," he says again, aware he's been making soothing noises for a while now. "It's okay." 

Steph giggles at that, actually giggles, but it's a little more amused and less broken-glass, and Danny will take what he can get. 

"Come on," Steph says, finally, pushing at Danny's chest with her free hand. Her grip on his other hand has loosened up and Danny can feel his fingers again, thank god. "Danno, come on, you're going to kill your knee." 

"Worth it," Danny says, without thinking. Steph draws in a surprised breath. "What," Danny asks. "You didn't know that? You're worth it." 

Steph is still in his arms, and any time before now Danny would have sworn the Navy and the SEALs had trained the freeze part of fight or flight out of her by now, would have bet his life on it, and he'd have been so very wrong. 

"You're worth it," he says again, and ruffles her short-cropped hair the way he knows she likes. "You don't have to do lessons for Grace, or know which fork is which, or, hell," he takes a breath, then goes for it. "You don't even have to stop being dead wrong about pineapple on pizza," he says, and hopes Steph will hear that for the declaration it is. "I like you the way you are," he says, because Steph is smart, she's a freaking genius most days, but it seems like maybe she needs this spelled out for her, and Danny's learning, he is, and he can try to meet her halfway. "I'm not asking you to change, Steph, if I wanted something else, I wouldn't have moved in with you." 

She takes a deep breath, and then sits up. Her face is blotchy and tear-stained and Danny wants her so much in that moment. He presses a kiss to the side of her mouth, gentle, undemanding, and she kisses him back harder, like she's looking for some kind of confirmation. It gets heated pretty fast, and Danny finally has to shove her away from his neck. 

"God, Steph," he gets out, when she makes a plaintive noise and just keeps going for it. "Not that I don't appreciate the enthusiasm, babe, but," he gestures around. "We're in my car. Grace sits in this car." 

Steph makes a face at him. 

"Also," Danny adds, because she clearly doesn't care about his daughter's exposure to places they've fucked, he's shacked up with an animal, a literal animal. "This would be way more comfortable and less likely to get us arrested in a bed. I'm just saying," he says. "Car windows? Not so much with the whole privacy thing."  

Steph laughs, and Danny kisses her again. 

"Drive," he says, and she does. 

They stumble into the house, and Danny drags Steph upstairs, and Danny coaxes Steph into pinning him down, hands on his shoulders as she rides him, all the lean long lines of her above him as he can't hardly move, and it's so good, god, it's so good, she's so damn strong, so hot, how did he get so lucky. 

Danny probably says some of that while they're fucking, because Steph grins and holds him down a little harder. 

They'll probably have to talk about that at some point, Danny thinks, the restraints thing, because he's into it, but he's self-aware enough to know, or at least he's watched enough porn to know, well, safe-words are a thing, and they're a thing for a reason. For now, though, he just wraps himself up in Steph’s arms and falls asleep. 

* * *

Rachel doesn’t seem all that surprised when Danny suggests that they find someone else for etiquette lessons, and Danny tries not to let that get his back up. He knows Rachel has been remarkably calm about this whole Danny-hooking-up-with-someone thing. She’s definitely been more calm about it than Danny was about Step-Stan, though even Danny will admit that’s a pretty damn low bar. Danny wasn’t at his best just after the divorce, okay, and his wife leaving him for a rich guy who hauled all their asses to Hawaii, well, anyone would have been a little cranky, Danny’s sure about that. Maybe Danny overdid it a bit. Still, Rachel seems not to absolutely hate Steph, and that’s good. 

So Danny bites his tongue when Rachel nods, her expression that blank mask he always hated. 

“I wondered how long that would take,” she says, and Danny must be making a face despite himself, because Rachel glares at him. 

“Oh, don’t make that face at me, Daniel,” she says. “It was obvious she was doing it to prove something to me, and maybe to Grace. God knows she has the information, but can you really imagine her teaching Grace how to curtsey properly?” 

The image of Steph bending in anything but a military-precise bow would be laughable if it weren’t so painful. Danny grimaces at the memory of how mask-like Steph's face had been the one time he'd seen her demonstrating for Grace. Her motions had been clockwork perfect, and he kicks himself again for not noticing how completely empty her expression was. He bites back an angry retort, because he's trying, he really is, and because Steph wouldn't thank him for it anyway.

“In any case,” Rachel goes on. “Give her my thanks for the names she sent over. Can she pick Grace up from school on Wednesday?”

And that, Danny knows, is a peace offering he’d be stupid to turn down. 

“In my car,” he grouses, and Rachel smiles the closest thing to grin he’s ever seen on her face. 

* * *

The woman they end up with for etiquette lessons is French, birdlike and tiny and elegant, and Steph has Chin hack into basically every inch of her life before approving her, once Rachel has done her preliminary interviews and Grace has met the last three candidates to have a chance to meet them. Madame is about thirty, not the elderly crone Danny was half-expecting. 

"She used to work in international diplomacy," Steph offers, after Madame has left, and Grace is playing in the sand in her swimsuit and apparently completely ignoring all the lessons she just got on posture and deportment.

"So you mean she's a spy," Danny says. Steph makes the face that says that yes, that is exactly what she means, and will Danny just stop being so damn obvious. 

"With, what," Danny says. "MI-6? What's the French CIA?"

Steph sighs, and flicks water at him. 

"I'm not telling you," she says. "She seems fine, and Grace doesn't hate her. We could do worse." 

Danny's not arguing that, not really. He just thinks it's kind of absurdly overkill to have an international woman of mystery teaching his daughter how to write thank-you-notes, and he says as much. 

Steph shrugs. 

"She was qualified," she says. "Plus, this way Grace can get some language training in early, work on her accent."

They teach French at this fancy private school, Danny remembers. 

"Fine," he says. "But you're the one who has to tell me what she's saying if she starts swearing in French when she's a teenager." 

The grin Steph turns on him is delighted, and a little fragile around the edges. Danny runs his words through his head. Oh, he realizes. He hasn't been that clear about the future before, has he. 

"Yeah," he says. "You're stuck with us, babe." 


End file.
